by CCW | 26 March 2013 21:21
Jesus’ question to Judas underscores the various forms of betrayal that are on display in Holy Week. In The Continuation of the Passion according to St. Mark, it is the betrayal of justice and human dignity that is most apparent.
The chief priests, in consultation “with the elders and scribes and the whole council”, have Jesus bound and delivered to Pilate – the Roman authority. In a way, it is a betrayal of Jewish law and Jewish identity, a betrayal of, what we might call, religious, or ecclesiastical, justice. For it is about getting the Roman authorities to do what the religious authorities were not prepared to do themselves. In short, it is underhanded and gives rise to an even more explicit form of the betrayal of, what we might call, civil justice.
Jesus is hauled before Pontius Pilate and is accused by the chief priests of many things to which charges he answers nothing. Then there follows a complete miscarriage of justice in the releasing of the murderer, Barabbas, while condemning Jesus to be crucified. Pilate has the ultimate earthly authority here and yet he defers to the crowd about releasing the one and condemning the other, the innocent other. He knows, Mark suggests, “that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.” And yet he goes along with this charade of justice and gives in to the popular will of the people, the will of the mob incited by the envy of the chief priests. As Mark puts it ever so succinctly and yet so tellingly, “Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.” He is the classic example of a leader who follows the people. Justice is betrayed and perverted. He is “willing to content the people” but at the expense of law and justice and conscience. It is a betrayal of justice and truth.
Envy is, perhaps, the most nasty of the seven deadly sins, as they will later be known. It acknowledges the good of another but from the side of the negative. It resents the good which is perceived in another and which is lacking in you. It is not only about the inability to rejoice in another’s good or talent or gift but even more to resent it so much as to seek the annihilation of the other altogether. Envy is hideous and nasty. It is the underlying force that drives the two forms of betrayal on display in The Continuation of the Passion according to St. Mark. After the spectacle of the betrayals of justice by the religious and civil authorities, there comes the further spectacle of the betrayal of all and any form of human dignity. Jesus is not merely scourged; he is mocked and derided, hit upon and spit upon. Cruel tongues and cruel hands reveal the cruelty of our hearts. It leads to the cross.
Simon, a Cyrenian, is compelled, forced, to bear Christ’s cross, the cross upon which Christ will be crucified. There is not even the sense of willingly helping out one who is downtrodden and beaten, literally, the one who is the walking dead. At Golgotha, Christ, finally, is crucified. We might think that might be the end of it, but no. He is mocked and scorned, reviled and shouted at while hanging on the cross both by those that passed by and, particularly, by the chief priests and scribes. They remember his words, it seems, but only to cast them back into his face. “Ah, thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself, and come down from the cross. He saved others; himself he cannot save. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Even “they that were crucified with him reviled him.” The betrayal of human dignity is complete. There is no regard for the dignity of his humanity; there is only mockery and scorn by all, it seems. It is not a pretty picture of what we do to one another. It is what we do to Christ.
The cry of dereliction, itself a quote from the Psalms, is a prayer of the crucified, if not to the Father, at least to God. It expresses the agony of the indignity of the crucifixion, the sense of utter abandonment and helplessness. And yet that cry is misunderstood. Some who hear him mistake, “Eloi, Eloi,” for Elijah. They anticipate some prophetic intervention, Elijah “com[ing] to take him down.” The Crucified has even become a spectacle for our entertainment.
“And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the spirit.” He dies and yet his death already signals something new and wonderful; something good that comes out of this sorry spectacle of our betrayals of justice and human dignity. In a way, Mark’s account of the Passion already anticipates the Resurrection. First, there is the sense of something momentous and transformative; “the veil of the temple was rent in twain.” Something is fundamentally changed with respect to the forms of the relationship between God and man in the worship of Israel, a transition from the old covenant to the new is underway. Secondly, there is something new and wonderful for everyone, something universal, we might say. It is signaled in the words of the Roman centurion who “saw that he so cried out.” His words already anticipate the Resurrection. He says, simply and yet profoundly, “truly this man was the Son of God.” Out of death and destruction comes new life and joy. A greater justice and a deeper dignity arise out of our willful betrayals of both justice and human dignity.
The words of the Centurion speak volumes about God’s redemption of our humanity. Something good and true comes out of the evil and lies of our betrayals of justice and human dignity. It is God’s way at work through us, even through our evil. The Continuation of the Passion according to St. Mark reveals to us our betrayals of justice and human dignity but only so as to awaken us to something greater, our awareness of God in Christ. In the word of the Centurion rests the possibilities of a renewal of justice and a re-appreciation of human dignity. But only through, it seems, the spectacles of our betrayals, the forms of the Judas within us.
Fr. David Curry
Tuesday in Holy Week, 2013
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